OK, my mum christened me Graham but my friends call me “Howley”. I was raised in Bowraville on the mid north coast of NSW and spent most of my younger life on Beef and Dairy farms working with cattle and horses and fishing around the local creeks.

I came from a tight knit family, we had good times and I generally remember getting up to no good and running a muck.

I sang a lot as a kid but only really in my own company but I was always a little loud so maybe it was my calling. I remember listening to all of the cassette recordings of the popular radio stations mum collected over the years, Slim Dusty, Chad Morgan, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, Jim Reeves Marty Robbins and The Big O, the list is endless and lying with a Transister Radio in my bed listening to “Music Box Dancer” among other things on the numerous radio stations before I went to sleep.

I moved away from my home town and chased the money inland working as a Fitter Welder and like a lot of adventurous young Men started a family as well. I did not get a lot of time for music other than playing guitar to my children, walking up and down the hallways singing as they were going to sleep and I remember my kids “Brittney, Reid and Tayla saying “Dad you should play your music in front of people.. however supporting a family came first.

Circumstances changed for me down the track as they do and in 2012 I found myself at the proverbial crossroads looking for some direction and in August that year I took some time out and set off to the Gympie Muster. There were a lot of great performers trying to find their spot giving it their all and the talent was good.. but there was one bloke with “Rough Edges” a “Raspy voice” and a “This is who I am Take it or leave it” Stage presence that got me thinking, “I can do that, Just maybe I can fit in here somewhere”. Thanks very much Bill Chambers.

So off home I went, got a list of songs together and got my first pub gig playing covers… I desperately wanted to write my own material but I had no idea where to start until one day I sat down to journal a few feelings that I had floating around. It was like a poison building up in my system that I had to get out. So after putting pen to paper and feeling a whole lot better I sat back and thought, “There’s a song in that” so I picked up my guitar, put music to them and came up with two songs, both of which got me to the finals of the 2013 Gympie Muster “Maton Talent Search”.

So it was from there I came home and started writing when I could. I didn’t want to model myself off other artist’s, but I feel I found my true “Authentic Self” when I began studying the “Honesty” of James Taylor, the “Adventure and Vision” of Graeme Connors and John Denver and the “Rawness” of Springsteen. . It was these influences that gave me a glimpse of where real music came from and how a “Man with a Story” could get it out there.

In writing I have found something that will not leave me alone, it is on my mind before I go to sleep at night and it is what wakes me in the morning,